29th
About me
Howdy, my name is Bart Decrem. I’m from Belgium, but live and work in Silicon Valley. My first entrepreneurial venture was at the age of 13, when I started a weekly magazine for Belgium’s leading (only, in fact) underground radio station while working as a DJ there. In 10th grade, I got kicked out of catholic school for being a troublemaker. My parents briefly considered sending me to a tradeschool, but thought better of it when they saw me handling a hammer and nail. Instead, I finished high school at an international school in Brussels, which is where I developed my flight-risk tendencies. Not ready to get a job, I moved to the US and got a law degree at Stanford. I never did practice law (the closest I got to the firm life was a summer stint at McKinsey).
After graduation, I stayed in East Palo Alto, a low-income community just a stonesthrow away from wealthy Palo Alto, and, with a fellowship from Echoing Green Foundation started Plugged In, one of the nation’s first digital divide programs. During a visit in 2000, President Clinton honored Plugged In as a model for programs around the world.
I left Plugged In in March of ‘99 to co-found Eazel, an open source Linux desktop start-up. Our software, Nautilus, continues to be used by millions of Linux users. Among other projects, I coordinated the creation of the GNOME Foundation.
In March 2001, after it became clear that it would take a few more years before Linux on the desktop would really take off (my current estimate, and I’ve been saying this for years: next year is when the Linux desktop will reach the mainstream), Eazel shut down. I moved to Korea for a while and did business development for two local Linux startups.
I eventually found my way back to the Valley and, from the creation of the Mozilla Foundation in 2003 until the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November, 2004, I headed marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation. I coordinated Firefox marketing activities, including branding, the Firefox 1.0 launch and the creation of Spread Firefox, the community marketing effort for Firefox. I also headed up partnerships with Google, Yahoo and Amazon that have worked out quite nicely for Mozilla. My work for Mozilla was sponsored by Mitch Kapor’s Open Source Applications Foundation.
After leaving Mozilla, I founded Flock, which is building the web browser that lets you connect with your friends. Flock was started with the help of a great group of angel investors and advisors including Josh Kopelman, Gil Penchina, Joe Kraus, Scott Kurnit, Stratton Sclavos and others. VC investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Catamount Ventures and Shasta Ventures. I was Flock’s CEO through its Series C, and moved on in the Summer of ‘06.
Like numerous wandering entrepreneurs who’ve come before me, I needed some time to figure out What’s Next, and was offered a desk and other accoutrements at Doll Capital Management, where I was an Entrepreneur In Residence in ‘07. I’m now working on the Next Big Thing. More on that shortly.
I like to keep busy and help community projects that I believe can help bring about big change, so over the years I’ve worked on a number of other projects, including chairing CTCNet, a national network of community technology centers for low-income people and co-founding Full Circle Fund, an effort to engage a new generation of Silicon Valley leaders in tackling the social challenges facing our communities. I’ve also served on the Community Technology Advisory Board for SBC/Pacific Bell and on the board of RISE, an East Palo Alto mentoring program for African American high school students. Currently I’m an advisor to the McCullum Group, which is building a venture capital Fund Of Funds with an exciting philanthropic mission to help youth from low-income families get into college. I enjoy traveling and get annoyed when I don’t speak the local language. Thus, I speak Dutch, French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Korean and Chinese (in progress).
Here’s a profile on me from May 2007. Here’s my LinkedIn profile.
Click here to contact me. You can also follow me on Twitter (bartd) or, if you know me, friend me on Facebook.